Saturday, September 15, 2018

Pulp Review: Tarzan of the Apes

A Princess of Mars
put Edgar Rice Burroughs on the map, but it was the second story he
published in 1912, Tarzan of the Apes,
that solidified him has an adventure story writer. Tarzan
was also serialized in the All-Story,
then later published as a novel in 1914. It was a smash, and
Burroughs would go on to write over twenty novels in the series. 1918
would see the first two silent movie adaptations of the character,
and Tarzan movies would appear in every single decade since up to
now. (It makes sense. For Tarzan all you need is a muscular guy on a
jungle set instead of the special effects bonanza that is Barsoom)

The
story begins with an Englishman, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, sent
to Africa in the 1880s to investigate claims of abuse of black
natives by another European colonial power. Accompanied by his wife,
Alice, the humanitarian mission never begins, since a mutiny on their
ship leads to the couple being marooned on the western coast of
Africa. Eking out a living, they give birth to a son, but tragedy
takes both parents away. As fate would have it, the baby, also named
John, would be adopted by Kala, a she-ape of the tribe who's chief,
Kerchak, killed the elder Greystoke. They're not gorillas. The book
makes it clear that they're more of a missing link species that has
developed its own rudimentary language.

Named
Tarzan by his adopted tribe, the boy grows up to become an apex
predator. Weaker than the apes, but stronger than any normal man,
Tarzan's greatest weapon is his clever mind and the eventual
discovery of his parents' beach hut, where he slowly begins to learn
using tools and even teaches himself to read English.

A
tribe of cannibals, driven deeper into the jungle by colonialist
firepower, settle near the area and one of their hunters kills Kala.
Tarzan avenges her and begins to raid their village from time to time
for supplies and pranks, as they think he's some kind of jungle
spirit.

As he
grows to maturity, another group of explorers is marooned at the same
beach. A professor Archimedes Q. Porter has led an expedition to
discover lost gold, succeeded, and the crew turned pirate on him and
his family. Among the marooned are Jane Porter, the professor's
lovely daughter, and William Cecil Clayton, Tarzan's cousin and heir
to the Greystoke estate. Stunned at seeing other people that look
like him, Tarzan's attraction to Jane draws him away from his simple
jungle life and into the affairs of mankind.

There
is a LOT going on under what is, on the surface, a straightforward
tale of jungle adventure. The beginning taps into the same vein of
classic adventure stories like The Swiss Family Robinson,
Robinson Crusoe,
Treasure Island, and
Captains Courageous.
As Tarzan grows, Burroughs frequently meditates on nature vs nurture
themes, and how even removed from any human contact or experience,
Tarzan's human qualities set him apart from everything around him. He
is the noble savage;
clear of mind and decisive, clever but needlessly cruel, a peak
physical specimen, uncorrupted by the needless complications of
civilization.

As for
the topic of race, Tarzan's antagonism toward the cannibal tribe
comes from a personal place: they killed his adopted mother.
Esmeralda, Jane's black servant, frequently falls into “Lawdy
lawdy” stereotypes, but she's also one of the few who understands
the danger of the situation. Professor Porter and his colleague
Samuel T. Philander are even worse stereotypes: the bumbling
academics who are too stupid and oblivious to function in real
danger. The two of them wander off into the jungle one night, get
hopelessly lost, and argue about the merits of Moorish civilization
while a lion patiently follows them around until Tarzan rescues them.
Its played for laughs, but hammers home their uselessness.

William
Clayton isn't a bad man, but he's something of a fop and a soft
fellow who wilts when real pressure arises. Civilization has made him
weak. The only people, white or black, who aren't treated as weak or
villainous are Tarzan, his dead parents, Jane Porter, and Lieutenant
D'Arnot, a French officer who shows up later in the book to help
Tarzan enter into Western Civilization.

Action
sequences remain a highlight of Burroughs' style, with a believable
escalation from Tarzan killing a gorilla with a rusty knife at the
age of 10 to driving a car and swinging around Wisconsin in the
middle of a forest fire. That happens, and the road to how Tarzan
gets from point a to point b is a roaring good time, and it ends on
one hell of a cliffhanger.

If it
were just a solid action-adventure story, it would be worth it, but
Burroughs works in some deep thinking as well that adds another
dimension to the story.

Absolutely
recommended.

That glorious Neal Adams cover art from the 70s deserves its own showcase. Wowza.

1 comment:

Great review of a book that is still immensely entertaining. I would recommend reading Tarzan of the Apes and its sequel, The Return of Tarzan one after the other. In many ways, they are two halves of the same story.

Your point that the Mangani were NOT gorillas was something that the makers of the latest Tarzan movie never caught or lost to the seductive pull of computer generated graphics. It's an entertaining enough film, but not really a Tarzan movie.